About this book

Wilderness mapping may sound like a bit of an esoteric topic, but when you think carefully about it, it is a fundamental theme within environmental science and management. Wilderness is in many ways the pristine resource. It is where we as humans have historically derived all of our goods, services and resources, save perhaps for human ingenuity itself – though one might argue that the development of even that has its origins in our distant wild past wherein survival and development as a species depended on intelligence and invention.

Even today in our advanced technological society we derive so much from wilderness and wild landscapes that we often take for granted. Clean air and water are the most obvious, but we must not forget the other regulating and supporting services provided by wilder lands including flood retention, carbon storage and sequestration, wildlife habitats and recreational environments. Wilderness also provides us with subjects of scientific study where we can observe natural processes and wildlife free from human interference. We should also acknowledge their importance as a source of not only scientific knowledge but also artistic and personal inspiration.

Mapping Wilderness attempts to give a comprehensive overview of the topic area covering the conceptual and philosophical foundations, techniques and methodological approaches, and applications at a variety of spatial scales. In doing so the editors have brought together a range of contributors who are both experts in their field and cutting-edge thinkers in the wilderness and spatial mapping field. Spatial information technology and mapping science is a rapidly expanding and developing field and so the editors expect to be able to add to this in the future. For now, Mapping Wilderness provides a record of the "state of the art".

Contents

ContentsList of ContributorsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsDedication

1. Introduction2. The wilderness continuum concept and its application in Australia: Lessons for modern conservation3. Connectivity, networks, cores and corridors4. The Use of Spatial Technology in USDA Forest Service Wilderness Recreation Site Surveys5. Wild Vistas : Progress in Computational Approaches to 'Viewshed' Analysis6. Mapping Human Impact using Crowdsourcing7. Visualising spaces of global inaccessibility8. Addressing Weak Legal Protection of Wilderness: Deliberate Choices and Drawing Lines on the Map9. Unraveling the Coil of the Wild: Geospatial Technology and Wilderness10. Wilderness areas in Romania, a case study on the South Western Carpathians11. Purism scale approach for wilderness mapping in Iceland12. Is there something wild in Austria?13. Conclusions

Author IndexSubject Index

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Biography

Steve Carver is a geographer with an interest in application of GIS to wilderness and wild landscapes. He is particularly interested in quality assessment, public participation and visibility analyses. He has worked widely on these topics in the UK, Europe and North America. He is Director of the Wildland Research Institute, and is based in the School of Geography, University of Leeds.

Steffen Fritz is Head of the Earth Observation Systems group in the Ecosystems Services and Management Program at IIASA. Steffen is the main driver behind Geo-Wiki and is currently researching different incentive schemes for crowdsourcing of land cover in Kenya, Tanzania and Austria through the European Research Council funded project called CrowdLand. His PhD was on wilderness mapping under the supervision of Steve Carver.